1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a program, apparatus, and method of conducting a questionnaire online by using the Internet technique, capable of improving the quality of a questionnaire and increasing a response rate of questionnaire responses with high usefulness and originality.
2) Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in order to make survey on a consumption trend and user consciousness, an apparatus for conducting questionnaires has been used so that the questionnaires are conducted online, in addition to questionnaires conducted using postcards and telephone.
This apparatus presents a questionnaire to questionnaire respondents by using e-mails or Web pages in the Internet, and collects responses to the questionnaire from the questionnaire respondents.
In order to improve the response rate of responses to the questionnaire, the apparatus provides services of giving points to the questionnaire respondents and exchanging cumulative points with gifts.
According to the conventional apparatus for conducting a questionnaire, prediction is made in advance about what kinds of opinions and impressions the questionnaire respondents might have, and a questionnaire is presented to the questionnaire respondents based on the prediction.
Implementers of questionnaires have an object of collecting responses having high usefulness and originality from the questionnaire respondents, and reflecting these responses in their product development. Therefore, the contents of the questionnaire are very important in order to obtain valuable responses with high usefulness and originality from the questionnaire respondents. In other words, when the contents of the questionnaire are appropriate, it becomes easy to obtain valuable opinions.
However, according to the conventional apparatus, a box where any opinion is freely described (“free-description box”) is set in a questionnaire, and the questionnaire respondents are requested to freely describe their opinions and impressions in this box as responses to the questionnaire. Therefore, it is difficult to obtain responses with high usefulness and originality. This problem has been attributable to the fact that it is cumbersome and the questionnaire respondents feel embarrassed to fill in own opinions and impressions in the free-description box.
Further, according to the conventional apparatus, the improvement in the response rate has been targeted by giving points to the questionnaire respondents based on a simple method of giving points uniformly to the respondents each time when the questionnaire is responded, without depending on the contents of the questionnaire response.
However, according to the conventional apparatus, points are given to each questionnaire respondent when he or she has answered to most of questions in one questionnaire even if the free-description box has not been filled in. Therefore, in order to obtain points, the questionnaire respondents do not feel it necessary to dare to describe their opinions in the free-description box. As a result, it has been difficult for the questionnaire implementers to obtain responses with high usefulness and originality that the questionnaire implementers really want.